


Dialling Tones

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Yondu's a shit dad, but he tries, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 01:05:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7992967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gamora is making calls in the middle of the night, Rocket is building dangerous contraptions at the breakfast table, Drax is a terrible cook, and Peter suspects his newfound family is rupturing at the seams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dialling Tones

**Author's Note:**

> Kink meme prompt! I'll put it at the end.

It starts with a whistle.

That’s odd. In Peter’s experience, nothing _starts_ with whistles. Whistles bring about endings rather than beginnings: whether it’s an argument cut short before Peter can fit in a final jibe, or a malfunctioning engine rod that’s sheered from its components before it can go nuclear, or a mutinous Ravager who’s suddenly and without warning deprived of their head. Onboard the _Eclector_ , a whistle is the ultimate show stopper. It means that the fun’s over, the game’s played out, and now somebody’s going to die.

Right now, that whistle’s directed at Peter.

Peter’s forearms bunch beneath his leathers as he strains against the Ravagers’ hands. He stops struggling when Yondu turns away though. Years of accumulated animosity compound into something hurt and vulnerable in that moment. Perhaps Yondu’s right; perhaps he _has_ gone soft. Because a real Ravager would feel nothing but fury if their killer didn’t look them in the eye.

But Yondu’s turned away because Yondu doesn’t want to watch Peter die. And that means he’s not a complete monster. Not like Ronan or Thanos. As ever, Peter can’t hate him nearly as much as the old blue a-hole deserves.

He glares at his ex-captain’s shoulders, finding them far too relaxed for a man about to butcher the closest thing he has to a legacy. He tells himself it’s because Yondu’s putting on his usual act of no-shit’s-given. But while the telling’s easy, the convincing is another matter.

Gamora certainly isn’t calling his bluff. She screams out, a single desperate _No_ that tightens around Peter’s heart.

Yondu doesn’t spare her a glance. She may be the most dangerous woman in the galaxy, but she ain’t gonna come between a Ravager captain and his revenge. But the arrow quivers, just a little. Peter notices because its tip is screwing a steady borehole into his neck, tiny licks of radiation singing tender flesh.

Yondu must’ve been surprised by the earnestness in her voice. Peter definitely is.

Sure, quid-pro-quo and all that. But if Gamora’s only upset about Peter’s impending death-by-arrow because she’ll lose her chance to repay the debt she incurred, when Peter unclipped his spacemask from behind his ear and bared himself to the void, she doesn’t have to sound so damn _heartfelt_ about it. What is he to her, anyway? A partner – in crime, heroics, or bed? A failed mark? An annoyance?

Peter doesn’t know. Whatever the answer, he doubts it warrants a plea for his life. But in that second before he barks out the words that will earn them another day in this Galaxy – “We got a ringer!” – he sees Yondu’s clever red eyes skid between him and her, and piece together something that bodes well for neither. Gamora fails to notice.

“Ronan’s weak,” she says. She pushes out her jaw, leaning away from the Ravagers restraining her. Her eyes – beautiful brown eyes that Peter could gaze into all day – are scrunched with defiance. “He’s _vulnerable_.”

Yondu stares at her for so long that Peter’d think he was checking her out if his glare ever left hers. Then his scowl cracks into the familiar cap-toothed grin. He pulls Peter into a hug. “I always knew ya were a good’un, boy – s’why I never let my boys eat ya!”

It’s as if someone’s flipped a switch. Gone are the bloodthirsty band of mercenaries, who chose the most common colour of extra-terrestrial sanguine for their uniforms to avoid unnecessary staining. In their place are a gang of yodelling men, who’d look more at home in an Outer Rim booze-bar than a pirate ship.

Peter’s well-used to the transition. Gamora, less accustomed, shakes off those who attempt to involve her in their celebration. Yondu glances to her again. He's calculating beneath his exuberant exterior, and Peter’s suddenly desperate to say something, anything, to retract his attention.

Yondu only uses people for his own gain. And despite her strength, her badassery, and her ability to beat him like a dusty carpet – not that Peter’d admit that last one; he has _some_ pride – there’s something… _fragile_ about Gamora. As if she’s half-shattered already. As if she’s been used before.

The Galaxy is no place for fragile things; they either harden or they break. For some reason, despite having known her less than a week, Peter doesn’t want Gamora to take that latter route.

When the warning shot from Rocket’s gun shatters off the shields, stealing Yondu’s focus from the girl Peter wants to call _friend_ , Peter welcomes it with relief. Then panic, as he realizes Rocket could blow the lot of them to smithereens.

“Woah, woah, woah! Rocket, I’m fine! We’re fine! We’re all cool; we got it worked out!”

A pause. His heart thumps so loud he barely hears Rocket’s reply. “Oh. Hey, Quill.” But by then he’s too busy sighing in relief to care.

He’s going to live. _Gamora_ ’s going to live – her eyes indicate she’s as jubilant as he is, although her expression remains restrained. Heck, they should all be celebrating. Even Yondu gets another few years to scrounge through the starways. Rocket’s appeased and brought aboard, alongside Groot and Drax. The five of them convene in a quiet store room and plot. They stand up and declare their intentions; they lead the Ravagers on what will be, for many of them, a suicide mission. Then they fight. They hold hands. They win.

Life goes on.

At least, it goes on until Peter catches Gamora fiddling with the radio.

His pulse, which has been keeping a steady tempo suited to a mid-sleep-cycle loo break, revs. Peter freezes, one boot hovering above the threshold to the main atrium – he’s learnt the hard way not to walk around barefoot when sharing space with Rocket, who drops nuts, bolts, and sharp edged electrical devices with the same nonchalance with which he sheds fur.

What’s she doing? Sure, Peter understands how open stars can sow antsiness in a brain. He’s suffered his fair share of sleepless nights. At times like these, he too ascends into the _Milano_ ’s cluttered cockpit – but to watch those stars wheel by, not to mess with his radio settings.

Maybe Gamora’s tired of hearing the Xandarian pop channel playing non-stop, drowned out only when Peter blasts his Walkman tapes loud enough to make the outer panelling vibrate. However, if she thinks he won’t notice she’s switched channels when he next settles into the pilot seat…

Peter may be frail when compared to the rest of his crew. But he’s not stupid, and he hates being underestimated.

His sleep-fogged gaze sharpens on Gamora’s maroon hair. It swings to her mid-back, obscuring the view of the screen she’s hunched over. The light illuminates the strands from behind, a ghostly stained-glass window effect that makes each individual hair glow.

“There,” she says. “Lost the signal for a moment. What were you saying?”

This time, Peter’s heart stops entirely.

They’re on the run. From the Ravagers, who’re baying for his blood after a switcheroo left Yondu with a plastic figurine in place of an Infinity Stone. From Nebula, who will only dare crawl back to Thanos if she brings him the Guardians’ assorted heads. Even from the Nova Corps, after an awkward incident involving a rogue herd of Moombas, an obliterated offworld station, and Rocket demanding Nova Prime donate her wig for one of his zanier schemes. All calls can be reverse-traced to show location, with the right equipment and tenacity. As a result, Peter’s limited them to jobs-related exterior contact only. Just until there are fewer folks gunning for their capture, torture, and slow execution.

And as he’s deemed the Guardians’ most personable character, all job contacts run through him. That means Gamora’s either making a personal call or she’s going behind his back to organize business. Whether that business is nefarious or otherwise, Peter doesn’t like it. In fact, if he was anything less than the badass space hero he proclaims himself to be, he might feel a little hurt.

They’re a team. Isn’t that what Gamora keeps saying? They’re a team, and they need to trust each other. Well, how’re they supposed to do that if she’s making secret holocalls in the middle of the night?

Peter, for the first time since they pledged their grudging allegiance to one another in the grimy pit of the Kyln, is reminded that she’s a Daughter of Thanos. Trained in the arts of subterfuge and deception. It couldn’t be… Could it? Gamora’s not a mole. She says she hates Thanos – and Peter trusts himself to be a good enough judge of character to believe her. Anyway, if she’s still in that grim purple giant’s pocket, why didn’t she snatch the orb and scamper back to him when she had the chance?

No, Peter assures himself. He grips the doorframe tighter than is necessary, knucklebones standing out against the skin. Gamora wouldn’t betray them. She’s their friend – practically _family_. Peter trusts her with his life.

…If he’s as assured as he claims in Gamora’s innocence, why hasn’t he returned to bed?

Peter forces himself to relinquish the doorframe before he snaps it – or, more likely given his Terran constitution, busts a ligament from squeezing too hard. He takes a cleansing breath of stale, recycled ship air, and slopes into the shadows.

Gamora will come clean in the morning. Peter won’t even have to confront her about it. She’ll spill the beans over the breakfast table: she heard the comm system bleep in the middle of their downshift and decided against waking him, or she received a hail from Dey with the Nova Corps’ official terms of amnesty, or she just fancied take-out via delivery. Whatever the cause, Peter can sweep it from his mind. His curiosity will be assuaged soon enough.

…And if Gamora doesn’t feel like sharing, well. There’s always the radio log.

***

Gamora doesn’t feel like sharing. Peter, methodically chewing through his bowl of morning protein grits, lets his eyes wander from their usual pre-caffeine middle distance to fix on her. Gamora sits in prim silence opposite, having scraped up her own meager portion. Cybernetically enhanced folks didn’t need as much nutrition as those whose bodies are purely biotic. Don’t need as much hydration nor sleep either – which is a plausible explanation for Gamora’s late-night excursion. Peter often stumbles across her polishing her swords by starlight, when he gets lost in his head and slumber eludes him. Sometimes they sit up together, the lack of conversation friendly rather than empty, basking in each other’s presence.

Peter doubts that’ll happen again any time soon.

It’s an honest shame. He only discovered such comfort recently. Now it’s soured by Gamora’s secretive behaviour, he feels like he’s been cheated. He never encountered tranquillity like that on Earth, except in his earliest memories when mom was still well enough to chase him around grandpa’s garden in the sticky Georgia sun, catch him, roll him like a turtle, and blow raspberries on his belly before collapsing beside him to cloud-gaze. Any hint of it that hadn’t been eradicated by her slow malaise had diminished further while he ran with the Ravagers. Life with them was a constant whirlwind of motion. You worked hard, partied hard, conked out for eight hours and did it all again. There was no laxness in schedule, no space to simply… exist. Only three purposes, which governed life aboard the _Eclector_ like the cogs in a clockwork contraption, keeping the whole crew ticking in the same direction.

_Steal from everyone. Wreak havoc. Make money._

Peter’s eternally grateful to the Guardians for helping him leave those adages far behind. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss the bastards sometimes, when his eyes alight on the yellow flame patch stitched to his sleeve, or he spies a familiar shade of red leather at a bar.

He misses Yondu most of all.

It’s all kinds of pathetic and stupid, given the smug blue jackass was the one to abduct him in the first place. Peter has yet to forgive him for that. Couldn’t he have at least waited until after mom’s funeral to pick up his Terran snack-to-be?

Although, considering everything Peter learnt on Xandar – namely, that he’s not as Terran as he’d always assumed – Yondu’s usual guff about snatching Peter because he fancied a bite to eat holds about as much truth as every other word that comes from the Ravager captain’s chip-toothed mouth. Which gives Peter even _less_ reason to find himself here. Glumly slumped in the low hold, far from the idiosyncrasies of his bustling crew as Drax and Gamora squabble over the optimum blade-whetting process, Groot tests out his toddle, and Rocket tinkers with bits of mechanics stripped from the parts of the _Eclector_ he deems non-essential. Wondering when he became such a sentimental idiot. And wishing Yondu was here.

He’d know what to do. Actually, he’d probably do what Peter’s been unsuccessfully psyching himself up for: march over, collar Gamora by the neck, and demand she tell him what she’s up to _this instant, girl._

But Peter has no whistle-bound arrow to reinforce the order. And as agitated as this situation’s got him, he doesn’t think he’d be able to threaten her properly, not when he cares for her so much.

Peter drops his forehead to rest on his knees. This low in the ship, everything reeks of engine exhaust and oil, and his pants are already slick with grease just from finding a box to perch on. If Rocket had the access codes, Peter’d constantly be holding him back by the scruff to prevent him from digging greedy little claws into the _Milano’s_ inner-most workings. If Drax had followed him down, he would sit besides Peter for a patient five minutes before sauntering away, assuming from the silence that Peter wished to be left alone. If Gamora were here…

If Gamora were here, Peter doesn’t know what he’d do. What he’d say. How he’d excuse himself for fretting so much over a simple comm-call, without looking like some egocentric control freak.

He’s concerned for their safety, that’s all. He’s leader, and has a duty to look out for his crew.

Peter is so busy contemplating his lot in life – and berating himself over the certainty that _Yondu_ never ran away to hide in a storeroom and panic when the stresses of leadership weighed heavy on his shoulders – that he doesn’t notice the door creak open. He does notice the _splat_ as Groot trips over his own twigs and falls flat on his face.

“Aw hell.” Peter darts over and levers Groot from the puddle of gummy, resin-like engine run-off before the little tree flounders about and coats himself entirely. “Buddy, not that I don’t appreciate the company, but you’re too little to be running around in here. Look – now you need a bath.”

“I… am Groot?”

Peter’s smile blossoms across his face for what feels like the first time all day. It’s wobbly, but unmistakable. “Thanks buddy. I’m fine. Now, let’s get you cleaned up.”

He can’t ruminate over Gamora’s late night escapades any longer. In fact, he figures that his best bet would be to put it from his mind entirely – get on with life and see if anything comes of it. Gamora’s business is her own, after all. Just because he’s their leader doesn’t give him the right to intrude.

He scoops Groot onto his shoulder, letting the sticky child nuzzle his neck without complaint. “Next stop, shower-room,” he says, feigning cheer. “Then I’m gonna hail Zarlog – see if that job he mentioned is worth the pittance he’ll pay for it.”

And if he happens to glance at the past call register as he does so, well. It’ll be a happy coincidence.

 

* * *

 

 

Only when Peter, fresh-scrubbed and shampooed, lowers himself into the captain’s chair and brings up the holoscreen on the windshield, the register is empty.

Zarlog’s job isn’t worth it, but they’ll do it anyway, if only to stop them butchering each other out of boredom. The crew usually look to Peter as their most moderate member – which says more about their volatility than Peter’s own temperament. On the whole, they’re quick to anger, quicker to fight, and about as attuned to the finer facets of Peter’s emotions as a lump of lead. While there’s been a strange quality to the atmosphere on ship this morning, simultaneously stifling and delicate, the Guardians have yet to confront Peter about his mood. He doubts they’ve even fully realized it. With the exception of Groot, that is.

The sapling’s clung to him ever since their encounter in the engine room. Their shower had been a pleasant departure from the matter at hand – albeit fraught with the fear that Groot, slippery and sudsy, would scoot from Peter’s hands and slither down the drain. For now, Groot perches on Peter’s thigh guard, rocking back and forth and humming to himself. Peter’s headphones are clipped to his belt. He sets the tapedeck to _Want You Back_ , and Groot beams delightedly, his swaying becoming rhythmic.

Try as he might to concentrate on the mystery of the radio and its unforthcoming record, Peter finds himself nodding along. There’s a small flicker of pride eroding his tension headache. Groot’ll make a fine dancer one day.

The tiny flakes of bark comprising Groot’s slim shoulders lay as smooth as snakeskin under Peter’s palm. He rubs Groot’s back, scritching lightly with a single finger as one might with a very small, very fragile dog. He’s rewarded by the jerking of Groot’s leg, which starts to tick in the same way Rocket’s does when Drax strokes his ears.

“Good, buddy?” he asks quietly. And then – unable to help himself from casting a sidelong look at Gamora as he says the words – “You’re the best damn person on this crew. You’d never hide stuff from me.”

“Peter.” Busted. He twists to Gamora, plastering on a smile.

“What? Something come up on the radar?” _Or are you developing a conscience?_ He’s disappointed when Gamora nods, and spins the radar display that’d been occupying her attention so its dull red gleam glosses Peter’s freckles like a thrown pint of blood.

“Look. The co-ordinates Zarlog sent us. They’re in the midst of the A’ashka quadrangle.”

Peter’s stomach tightens. “So?” he asks, although he already knows the answer.

“So that’s Ravager territory.”

The A’ashka quadrangle is a field of scorching stardust, still cooling from a decade-old supernova. The few shreds of planet that survived the explosion are arid and uninhabitable, their atmospheres red-black with ash. It’s exactly the sort of poisoned place where Ravagers belong.

They made the shift from their previous haunt recently: a caravan-train of ragged red ships and raggedier men. It was during this mass exodus that Yondu intended to deposit the orb on Xandar. Between concrete homes, feeling as nebulous and undefined as the road they travelled, Peter had sensed a glimmer of freedom as his captain sprawled on his throne and related the details of the job that’d flush their coffers for the next three years.

So he’d done what any self-respecting Ravager did when they saw something they wanted. He snatched it.

Really, Yondu should be proud of him for that.

But as such, Peter’s never had the dubious pleasure of visiting the Ravagers’ new home. Of their original homestead though, he’s retained as many traumatised memories as pleasant ones. In Peter’s mind, the latter are more disturbing – or at least, more confusing. After all, the asteroid field between Sclara-IV and Deltox-II, so thick and hazardous to navigate that it blots out the light from either dwarf star depending on which side you pass, shouldn’t have been a suitable place for child-rearing. That Yondu is far from a Nova-certified parental figure ought to have contributed too. By all rights, Peter should’ve spent his formative years ducking from one blow to the next, terrified out of his mind, corralled by looming red-clad bodies and the wheeling chasms of cold dead space.

Yet somehow, improbably – call it a miracle or an act of cosmic fate – these negatives had combined into something tenuously _nice_. Peter recalls being smacked upside the head once or twice for giving his captain lip. But he also remembers Kraglin scrumpling his hair and laughing as Peter ducked away, Gef showing him how to prep a plasma pistol (and repeating the first step twenty times; the dumb sod’s brain damage made remembering what’d happened five seconds ago difficult, let alone the complex process for gun-maintenance), Taserface and Horuz grudgingly acknowledging that his cooking was decent enough that it’d be a waste to eat him…

And Yondu, of course. Yondu, who’d beat his men bloody for disrespect one minute, then pull them in for a cheerful noogie, a one-armed hug, and a clank of moonshine-flagons the next. Peter hadn’t been spared the smackdowns – not since he hit fifteen, at which point Yondu decided the Terran brat was big enough for him to quit pulling his punches. But even then, Peter had been treated leniently. He’d never made Yondu flip his coat over the arrow. Not until they clashed above Knowhere, when Peter’s lungs were aflame from the rapid repressurization and his eyes so bloodshot they were nearly as red as Yondu’s own…

But that’s in the past now. The Ravagers have claimed the A’ashka quadrangle, at the expense of any nomadic natives or refugees from the now-defunct star-system. They’ve thoroughly defamed themselves, following the amnesty they earned after the salvation of Xandar. There’s been pillage, plunder, and pickpocketing aplenty, and those’re just the recorded crimes. Yondu’s bounty has been reinstated, and tripled to boot, as have those of his inner circle of cronies – barring Horuz, whose charred remains were dug out of the rubble in the battle’s aftermath.

Peter would claim he never checked up on them, never scrolled through the Nova annals in search of those familiar leering mugshots. But the history on his interplanetary data-device would proclaim him a liar.

The same history Gamora’s tampered with. Peter checks again, just in case. But no. It’s undeniable – everything from last night has been clipped so as to appear as if the damn thing was never turned on. If Peter’s recollections weren’t so tangible – the metal walls cool beneath his fingertips, the gentle creaks of the _Milano_ at rest a soporific lullaby, the air tinged by the pungent scent of the previous evening meal, which Drax had been put in charge of (and from whom said charge had swiftly been revoked) – he would’ve thought it was all a dream.

But no. It’d been real. He knows it.

Peter searches, but finds nothing but genuine concern in Gamora’s gaze, as she leans closer from the chair next door. She brings a waft of perfume offset by her acrid blade-cleanser, and presses the back of a hand to his forehead. “Peter, are you well? You’re staring. And not at my bust, for once…”

Rocket, the reluctant third wheel, spits an ugly snort over his console. “Fuck knows _why._ Real women have six tits, I’ll have ya know. And they’re _furry_.”

It’s easier to address him than the Zen-Whoberian he had, until this morning, considered his closest friend. He cranes away from Gamora’s hand, the green skin tacking lightly to his for the briefest of moments before the inevitable separation. “Good to know, bud. And I’m fine. Just… thinking. Old memories, you know?”

Gamora’s face takes on that artfully closed look that means she’s hiding her empathy. “Of your not-family?” She means the Ravagers. Apparently there’s a word in the Zen-Whoberi language that perfectly encapsulates his strained relationship with the mercenary band, but its translation into English is less than satisfactory.

“What of your family?” he deflects. Might as well take the opportunity to do some probing of his own. “I mean… I know they’re evil. Twisted. FUBAR, from most folk’s point of view – but even so. Don’t you miss them, sometimes?”

Rocket’s scoff is more of a snarl. “That’s like askin’ me if I miss them science types at the Facility. Just cause they’re all ya know don’t mean you gotta love them.”

“Hm.” Peter wishes it was so easy for him to cut his ties. But hey. A trip to the quadrangle might be just what he needs.

 

* * *

 

 

A trip to the quadrangle is not what he needs.

A trip to the quadrangle is a stupid idea, and Peter’s a stupid team leader for suggesting it. Really, he thinks, as the device Zarlog requested be salvaged from this charcoaled husk of a moon digs into his waist from where it’s tucked under his belt. He deserves everything he gets.

But that doesn’t mean he wants his crew dead. When Taserface, grinning, yanks Gamora from the Guardians’ line-up by the hair and rams his pistol barrel into her sternum, Peter jumps into action. All thoughts of possible betrayal are forgotten. All that matters is Gamora: her snarl devolving into worry when Half-nut levels his own weapon at Peter. She thrashes without care for the gun at her chest in her desperation to reach him, help him, rescue her friend...

“Gamora!” he shouts. Well, whispers. This satellite isn’t the most stable, and they’ve done enough structural damage already. The roof overhead bears a wonky borehole from where the Guardians drilled through, accessing a vast cathedral-dome of natural mineral that’s as hollow as a Hallowe’en pumpkin. Stalactites jostle for space above, stalagmites below. Whenever a voice is raised above twenty decibels, those multitudinous needles quiver in their settings like teeth in a rotten jaw. “It’s okay – do what he says! I’ll be fine.”

Gamora swings frantic brown eyes to him. And in that moment, the certitude of her love for her team is cemented. Peter’s convinced that she’d take the shot if it meant saving him. And he’d do the same for her – or Rocket, Drax, Groot; any one of them.

But she also keeps to her oaths. _We’ll follow your lead, Star-Lord,_ is chief among them. The fight drains from her in increments. She goes limp, and Peter strives to ignore the leer on Taserface’s mug as he keeps her sandwiched tight to him. Wouldn’t do for him to get angry and risk his own life for her honor, when he’s just told Gamora not to do the same for him.

“C’mon then,” he says lowly. He ignores the nozzle of the gun trained on him, whose black mouth gapes like a hole into eternity. “Let’s get this over with. Take us to your leader.”

It’s kinda hard to put a name to Taserface’s expressions, what with the whole raw-meat aesthetic he’s got going on. But Peter suspects that might be a sneer. “Our _leader,_ ” he spits, sounding less-than-pleased at the prospect, “don’t gotta know you were ever here. Or at least – he don’t gotta know we caught you alive.” He raises his voice to echo from the crumbling roof, bringing down glittering dust and chunks of ice-pale quartz large enough to crush a man’s head. Thankfully, they fall on his own ranks, rather than the Guardians. “Hear that, boys? By the time we got to ‘em, they’d already been crushed by the avalanche. Make sure to kill ‘em quick an’ clean, so any marks’ll be hidden when the rocks fall…”

Peter’s lungs close. He lurches a pace forwards, Guardians bristling at his back. “What, no! Are you crazy? Yondu’ll kill you! We’re not worth it. Just lemme talk to him, man. I’ll get this sorted out.”

Taserface’s gun joins Half-nut’s, both stolidly trained on Peter’s face. He wraps a meaty palm around Gamora’s throat to prevent her from taking advantage of his divided attention. “You’ll talk yer way out of it, like ya always do. I say enough. I say the captain’s too damn soft, and needs to be taught a lesson about _sentiment._ What d’you think, boys?”

Rather than reminding Taserface of the myriad punishments Yondu’ll enact on him if he catches even a _whiff_ of this nonsense, the cluster of Ravagers all clap and cheer – until they’re silenced by the ominous rumble from above. Taserface glances at the slumping, sagging rock-face. Sharp stalactites jangle like tubes in a windchime. They’re out of time. Peter, faced not with a Ravager he can negotiate with, but with an old foe who’s salivated for his blood since childhood, is almost floored by the debilitating wave of helplessness.

He can’t let it govern him. He can’t fall victim to it, can’t let it crush him surer than the oncoming landslide. If Peter gives in, he dies here, and his Guardians with him. He won’t allow that.

Swallowing, he reaches behind him – ignoring Rocket’s hiss of “No!” and Drax’s cautionary frown. He produces the device. Lit only by the dim gleam of the light-balls a few lower-ranking Ravagers clutch, the cavern is marginally brighter than a mineshaft. There’s no way Taserface can make out the finer details of Peter’s offering. “Don’t you at least wanna know what we came here for?”

Taserface’s lips peel from his diseased and blackened gums. But there’s a flicker of uncertainty there. “I don’t want none of yer lies, boy. Whatever it is, it ain’t worth as much to me as your head.”

Really, Peter thinks, he’s just gotta keep him talking. Yondu doesn’t allow ruckuses to cultivate, not without swooping in to remind his crew of his presence. It won’t be long before he catches wind of an incident; gossip spreads faster through Ravager ranks than flak shot in the vacuum. Then he’ll come storming by to save the day. Peter’ll get off with a smack to the wrist and a promise that next time Yondu won’t be so merciful. Taserface’ll be beaten about the head for not dragging Peter before the admiral immediately – or better yet, Yondu’ll finally lose patience and off him there and then. Then they’ll go about their merry ways, Ravager and Guardian. If he’s lucky, Peter might even have a chance to tell Yondu he’s sorry about the orb (because he doesn’t doubt that caused Yondu a whole load of hassle) and that while, given the chance, he’d do it all again, he hopes it doesn’t come to that.

“You telling me you’d rather kill me than earn cash?” he asks, projecting his voice as loud as he dares while the cavern roof rumbles in queasy flux. “Dunno about you boys, but that sounds a whole lot like _sentiment_ to me.”

“You dare –“ Taserface lunges forwards, shoving Gamora into the wall with a blow that would have concaved a lesser woman. Peter would worry about her if he could muster anything other than the sudden unshakeable certitude that this is how he dies. There’s something about seeing Taserface barrelling towards you – a juggernaut of wet red flesh and putrid breath – that makes any sane man’s defences wither.

Peter has never laid claim to being _sane_.

“Here,” he says, tossing the macguffin. Taserface, shocked out of his charge, fumbles to catch it. Unfortunately for him, Peter’s done another of his trademark lightning fast hustles. What Taserface now holds isn’t some unpronounceable relic from an obliterated satellite that Zarlog desires so he can do who-knows-what with it. It’s a primed and ticking grenade.

A primed and ticking grenade, in the middle of an unstable cave.

“Guys,” says Peter, nodding to Drax and Rocket, who grimly clasps Groot in his furry paws. “You might wanna start running.”

Gamora pries herself from the hole in the column, just as Taserface’s brain catches up with current events. He screams – at a pitch Peter would mock him for, if he only had the time – and lobs the grenade as high into the air as the cave will allow.

Meaning it smacks the roof.

The blast knocks out Peter’s hearing for several seconds – and throws him flat on his face, to boot. He’s hauled upright by Drax. The big guy pauses long enough to set him on his feet – and brush the powdered stone from his lapel; considerate but not exactly pragmatic considering the situation – before turning and sprinting for the exit. He scoops Rocket and Groot up along the way.

Overhead, smoke siphons through the new hole. That’s not good. This moon, like all dilapidated off-world places the Ravagers frequent, is equipped with an artificial gravity-generator that keeps a bubble of oxygen locked around it, preventing it from diffusing through the surrounding aether. But the structure of the rock assists in keeping this forcefield stable. Without it, half the asteroid’s liable to peel off into space, taking the majority of their air supply with it. At which point the gravity calibration will be so skew-whiff that the remnants will crunch in on themselves, mulching any poor sod who neglects to make a break for the nearest ship.

That process begins now.

The first rock is no smaller than Peter’s fist. The second, significantly larger. It thumps into the ground not ten metres away, crushing a Ravager’s leg. His scream is almost as bloodcurdling as the ringing in Peter’s ears. For a moment he can’t differentiate between the tinnitus and the shrieks. But then there’s a wet thud as a plasma bolt sears through bone and brain matter. The higher tones abruptly cuts out.

What Peter’d envisioned as a distraction is rapidly becoming a death trap. But hey – what can you expect, from twelve percent of a plan?

“Run!” he yells, sprinting past Gamora.

Now the first blocks have fallen, the rest are swift to follow. Stalactites shatter like dropped glasses, fragments erupting upwards in complex fractals before crashing back down to earth. The noise is hellish. Half-nut’s aim’s gone all wonky in the confusion, and he, like the majority of Ravagers, are staring at the spasming ceiling as if they’re watching a space-wreck in slow motion.

Gamora’s similarly dazed. It takes Peter a valuable moment to realize she isn’t following him. He turns to see her dimly silhouetted against the flash, as a light-orb bearing Ravager either hurls it into the chaos or is crushed alongside it. Her hair clings to her face in dusty strands. Her eyes, wide blank pools, reflect the maelstrom in the centre of the room, and her fingers brush her sword pommel as if to reassure herself it’s still there.

When Peter yanks her wrist she resists him. When Gamora resists, she won’t move if there’s a bilgesnipe snorting down her neck. Peter winds up leaning his entire body-weight onto the crook of her elbow, while Gamora blinks at the Ravagers scrambling for the lone exit, through which the other Guardians have already vanished.

Peter shakes her, to little avail. “What? What? We gotta go, now!” Then Gamora says something that indicates she’s been whacked far harder in the head than Peter originally assumed.

“Where’s Yondu?”

Peter manages to get a boot beneath him before he lands on his face. The floor bucks like a choppy sea. The columns lining the cave are stacks in a glitching Tetris game, buckling in on themselves in jagged concertinas, and the thunder from above crescendoes into a roar as boulder after boulder pours from the growing hole. Of Taserface, there’s no sign. Peter doesn’t have time to celebrate.

“Yondu?” he squeaks, barely audible over the cymbal-crash of rock on rock. “Why’re you worried about _Yondu?_ ”

Gamora’s chin settles into that defiant jut that means she won’t budge for love nor money – not that either have ever held much sway over her. “I do not abandon my friends,” she says. And before Peter can reassert his grip, she runs. She aims not for the funnelled entrance (which by now is heaving with Ravagers who elbow, punch, and trample one another in their desperation for freedom). Rather, her gaze is set on the debris of the once-great cavern, scanning crumpled bodies for any hint of blue.

Which’d be all well and good, if only Peter knew _why_.

“What’re you _doing!_ ” he screams again. Who knows if she can hear him? The cacophony roars louder than the symplegades. But he has to try. “Are you crazy?”

“Must be,” hollers Yondu. Watching him fight through the crowd of burly space pirates would be amusing if the situation weren’t so dire. Men of Drax’s proportions and above go flying to either side, sometimes directly into the pounding hail of rock, regardless of whether he’s shoved them. They prefer to risk their chances with the landslide than take an arrow to a face from a captain who’s been disobeyed.

Right now, Yondu seems unconcerned with punitive measures. His attention isn’t even on Quill – although he spares him a quick scowl, as if to say _this’s all your fault and I know it_. “Girl! What’chu doing?”

Apparently that’s all the time Gamora’s cybernetically enhanced brain needs to recalibrate. She perks like a meerkat and dives towards them before she can be swallowed by the billowing dust. “Good!” she yells, above the drum roll of the collapsing cave. “You’re alive!”

Yondu snorts, thumbing over his shoulder. “Yeah, yeah. Les’ get out of here so I can get y’all in the cook-pot before dinner.”

Peter’s stomach takes a dive for his boots. Whey-faced, he has to jog to keep up with his ex-captain’s march. Their trenchcoats slap each other’s shins as rocks rain on all sides. “You’re joking. Right?”

Gamora shoots him a withering look. She answers before Yondu can – who’s busy barging Ravagers out of their path. “Of course he is. Don’t you know him at all?”

 

* * *

 

Peter does not know Yondu at all.

This is a fact succinctly proven, as the three of them barrel from the bowing cave entrance and, rather than hauling them off to face judgment before a tribunal of space pirates, Yondu flashes his crest and bundles them under the shadow of an outcrop on the moon’s scorched surface.

“Go on, idiots,” he croaks. Then has to copy Peter and fold over, bracing his hands on his knees as he hacks up dust. The three of them are slathered head to toe in the stuff, practically dripping with it. More puffs out as the tunnel collapses behind them, bathing their backs in ashy-white. Once the coughing fit’s subsided, Yondu wipes his mouth, glancing around for eavesdropping Ravagers. When he finds none – those who escaped are too smart to stick around – he swaggers over to them once more, usual grin in place. He nods at the _Milano_ , whose shiny orange cockpit peeks over the next spiny stone dune. “If yer quick, ya might get outta this system before we give chase.”

That’s motivation if he’s ever heard it. Peter would take him up on the offer, if he wasn’t missing half his crew. The destabilizing satellite is racked by earthquakes of ever-greater magnitude – but he can’t leave without Rocket, Drax, and Groot. Luckily, a voice from the outcrop saves Peter from the hazards of a prolonged stay.

“Hey! Why’ve you brought _him_ here! Can’t ya see we’re hiding?”

Peter smirks. “Fat lot of good it’s doing you to yell at us then, Rocket.”

A familiar fuzzy form hops atop the nearest cairn, followed by Drax – who must’ve contorted himself to the point of dislocation to fit into the tiny cove behind it, out of sight from the Ravager horde that passed below. Peter notes, to his infinite relief, that Groot’s hugging the big guy’s shoulder. He doesn’t think he could bear it if his dumb spontaneity got his smallest crewmate hurt.

Yondu’s looking at him sideways. Peter hastily corrects his expression to something less sappy. But there’s no forthcoming derision: rather, Yondu turns with a snap of dry dusty leather and stalks to his own parked Warbird. “See ya round then, I guess,” he says shortly. “Or not. Next time I ain’t gonna be so merciful.”

Peter expects that to be that. He expects Yondu to make good on his threat, rally the Ravagers to tail the _Milano_ out of this star system and into the next, and put forth a genuine effort at butchering the lot of them. He’s willing to accept it too, if only because experience has taught him that where Yondu’s concerned, hope is only repaid in disappointment. As a result, it’s quite the shock when Gamora shakes her head. She storms after the retreating figure, and grabs his arm.

Oh shit.

Peter reaches for his holsters, stance slipping into battle-ready on automatic. The other guardians tense at his back, ready for a whistle, a punch, anything… If Yondu lays so much as a finger on their friend, he’s gonna find himself outnumbered and outgunned.

But Yondu merely glances down at the green nails digging into his arm and sighs. “Lemme go, girl.”

“No! You’re not just going to… walk off and _leave things_ like this again! I won’t let you.”

Yondu casts an arch look at the juddering hillock behind them. “What, you wanna wait around? If yer that eager to die, I can help…”

Peter has his pistol out and cocked in under a second. Gamora glares at him. “Joking, Peter.”

Yondu presses a mock-wounded hand to his chest – the one not attached to the arm Gamora’s captured, which she doesn’t show any intention of releasing. Grime shivers from his coat as it creases and crinkles, cracks zig-zagging through the caked white. “Who, me? Never.”

Then Gamora does something Peter wouldn’t have foreseen after a half-bottle of Kalzorian whiskey. She snorts, and foregoes squeezing the bloodflow from Yondu’s bicep in favor of brushing dust from his implant, where it’s settled into the carved grooves that symbolize something in a language Peter’s never been taught. Even more amazingly, Yondu doesn’t scowl and shoulder her off. He stomachs the weirdly intimate touch with raised eyebrows, before blowing on Gamora’s dust-dappled hair in recompense.

“Next time,” he tells her gruffly. Although it’s not so quiet as to be inaudible to his audience, something tells Peter these words are intended for Gamora and Gamora alone. “Next time, I promise.” Then he holds up a fist, which Gamora bumps, and strides over the rickety, lurching ground for his Warbird.

Peter’s still staring after him as the M-ship hums into the sky, puncturing the asteroid’s shrinking atmosphere like a fish jumping from a pond. The warbird’s engines flare rusty-orange, and fire sizzles from them in a glowing jet as Yondu guns for whatever rendezvous point he’s established with his men.

All Peter can think to say is “Idiot left the handbrake on again.” Gamora, stalking past him, pauses only to shake her head.

“He always does that,” she mutters.

Which is true and all, but how the hell does she know?

Suddenly that mystery comm-call makes a whole lot more sense. And with it comes a searing dose of jealousy. Because Peter’s been half-heartedly wooing Gamora, in the way he woos all creatures boasting breasts, since the day he met her: her teeth puncturing the husk of a juicy Xandarian fruit while she watched Peter toss the orb from hand to hand, lashes lowered to a beguiling half-mast. How could he lose to _Yondu?_

Sure, maybe Gamora’s type is old and blue. Which – eugh, Peter’s not thinking about. It’s gross and weird and all kinds of unfair, but Peter wants to grab her shoulder as she’d grabbed Yondu’s and ask what happened to not being seduced by pelvic sorcery.

Although – oh God. Yondu’s pelvic sorcery. Peter needs brain bleach, stat.

Despite all the words that clutter and jabber in his head, the only one he can blurt out as they start the trek for the _Milano_ is “Why?”

Gamora doesn’t slow her gait – for which Peter’s grateful; they’ve more than overstayed their welcome. But she does shoot him a faint frown. “Why what?”

“Why _him?_ ”

_What’s he got that I don’t? Is it because his ship’s bigger? C’mon, Gamora; you know what they say about middle-aged guys with big ships._

But try as he might, Peter can’t force the words out. To verbalize this mess would mean he acknowledges whatever’s going on between Gamora and the guy who’s his sort-of-dad. And just… Oh god, he’s going to puke. And not just because the asteroid’s surface is wobbling about like a plate of jello. “I’m not calling you mom,” he says dazedly. Gamora rolls her eyes at him.

“Hilarious, Quill. Now get your ship in the air before this asteroid becomes our grave.”

 

* * *

 

 

After that, things return to normal. Which in itself is abhorrently _abnormal._

Peter wakes up, showers, grudgingly scrapes Rocket’s fur from the hair-filter (because the little sod won’t do it himself), accepts the breakfast plate Drax puts in front of him with a dubious sniff, deems it to be unlikely to burn a hole through his esophagus, and eats mechanically until his spoon scrapes pewter. Gamora, sitting besides him with her own portion as-of-yet untouched, has given up on all pretence at secrecy and is texting Yondu.

There’s a small smile on her face. She’s in her usual morning wear – i.e., one of Drax’s many discarded shirts and panties that Quill is not allowed to look at under pain of death. Her hair’s up in a towel, as their total-body drying system is on the fritz after Rocket stole some vital component or another for his latest project. Said latest project pretty much fills his square of the table. There’s bulging pipes and scrambled wiring. Rocket’s submerged up to his elbows, and besides reassuring his crew that he’ll give them _at least_ five seconds of warning should he set off a chain reaction that’ll make the whole ship explode, he’s not bothered to fill them in as to what exactly it is that he’s doing.

Buried deep within this Frankenstein’s mechanism, something goes _bloop_. Peter decides it’s best not to ask.

Gamora’s smile increases in diameter. She pats the gurgling behemoth on its nearest protruding limb, ignoring Rocket’s automatic snap of “No touching!” and taps out an answer to an unseen witticism. The scene’s disgustingly cushy and domestic. Peter’s surprised Yondu hasn’t chewed her out for sentiment.

Then she angles her palm-held comm unit at the table in front of her. There issues the sharp snap of a filter. Peter groans around his mouthful. “Why’re you sending him pictures of our food?”

“Good question,” snaps Rocket, who is apparently the only other rational lifeform aboard. He unsticks his head from where it’d been wedged between two sheer steel plates, black eyes glittering like squashed bluebottles, scarcely distinct from the oil-smeared whiskers of his face. “Holy frutark, woman. You want him to poison us?”

Okay, so maybe ‘rational’ is the wrong adjective.

Gamora doesn’t glance from the screen, across which words are scrolling in minuscule Xandarian script. “Don’t be foolish. He asked if I’m keeping Peter fed.”

Drax, the only one to be consuming his breakfast with genuine relish, slurps noisily at whatever noxious accompanying beverage he’d brewed, which Peter and the others had had the sense to decline. Peter cocks his head, half-convinced he’d misheard.

“What?”

Gamora consults her palm-comm. “He says to make sure to eat your vegetables.”

“Christ.” Peter, for once in his life, is stumped. He’s bamboozled. He’s bemused. He’s been smacked out of the comforting urbanity of post-Ravager life, into some hellish nightmare where everything’s topsy-turvy and any hint of a logical cosmic order has been obliterated. Gamora and Yondu. _Gamora and Yondu._ What the hell has this galaxy come to?

Peter shoves his chair away from the table so hard he leaves grooves in the floor. The resultant screech gets everyone’s attention. Drax slops mystery-beverage down his front; Rocket jumps and sparks spurt from the exhaust tube pronging from the top of his contraption like steam from an old-fashioned train; Groot jerks awake from where he’s been kipping on the table top, where he gets most exposure to the cobwebbed solar-light panel above. For a blissful moment, he has their undivided attention.

“I don’t like this,” he says.

At which point there’s a _bing_ , and Gamora turns back to the palm-piece. “Don’t like what?” she murmurs, distracted, tongue poking between her lips as she constructs a response. But by the time she looks up, Peter’s already storming away, the echo of his footsteps booming heavily through the _Milano_ ’s cramped interior.

 

* * *

 

 

Gamora and Yondu. Yondu and Gamora. Gamora Udonta. Turquoise babies.

Yeah, Peter needs that puke-receptacle, pronto. But more importantly, he needs to impress it upon Gamora just how awful her first foray into a relationship is.

Sure, Peter gets it. Thanos was a shitty paternal stand-in, and Gamora didn’t exactly get to party wild and free during her teenage years. Peter’d hate to hear the shotgun talks that went down in _that_ household. Daddy-issues are no excuse though. Not for something of this magnitude, which has the capacity to blow apart and take one of the people he cares about most in the universe with it (okay, okay. Two. Shut up.)

Yondu only uses people. It’s in his nature. Peter wants – _needs_ – to be sure that Gamora knows what she’s getting into. Which is why, when she crawls into the duct besides him, the two of them suspended in a rigging of soft, worm-like pipes that funnel energy to the engines and life-support, Peter’s first words are as heartfelt as he can muster.

“Please don’t marry Yondu.”

Gamora’s smile makes a spasm for the shocked. Then, abruptly, the amused. “What?”

Cerulean light flutters intermittently over them in triple-pulses, like the beats of a triumvirate heart. The translucent tubing hums. The note is bass, almost brassy in timbre, and Peter feels it in his reverberating organs before it reaches his ears. Funny, how you only notice the white-noise when the silence becomes awkward.

Peter does what he does best, and perseveres. “Don’t marry him! I’ll have to be maid of honour _and_ best man, and I can’t change suits that quick. And… and…” He holds up a hand when Gamora makes to interrupt, signifying that his stutters don’t denote an ending. “And just. You’re like my sister, Gamora. And I’ve never had a dad, but Yondu’s the next closest thing.” He takes a breath so fast it veers on hyperventilation, launching onwards when Gamora opens her mouth. “Don’t say it! I know it’s none of my business. I know I should be… happy for you, or something. It’s wrong for me to get in the way. But… But I’m only human. Terran, I mean. This is too fucking creepy and confusing for me; I need time, or _something_ , and…” His voice trails to a whisper, almost lost to the throb of the dense inner-ship atmosphere. “And I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”

The pause drags so long Peter wonders if he’s gone deaf, if he’s blown a blood vessel from all that damn sentiment clogging his brain. Certainly, he wouldn’t be able to read Gamora’s lips – not when he’s striving to look anywhere else, so his overactive imagination doesn’t latch onto the thought of Yondu kissing them.

Yondu kissing _anything_. With those teeth. Blegh.

“Okay,” he mutters into his knees. Having drawn them tight to his chest, he rests in his cradle of piping like a fetus in the womb. “Go on. You can talk. Tell me what an a-hole I am.”

No such indictment comes. There’s laughter though. Lots of it. Ugly, hitching, _familiar_ laughter. Laughter that definitely isn’t emanating from Gamora, who is far too stoic to show amusement beyond a faint snort and a smirk – and who is, in fact, smirking right now. “I came here to ask,” she says, punctuating Yondu’s wheezes, “if you wanted to talk to him on speaker.”

Words vanish beyond the grasp of Peter’s brain for the second time in as many hours. “Honestly,” he says, once they’ve crawled back. “He’s the last person I want to speak to right now.”

The cackles on the other end of the line bubble rapidly to silence. Gamora glances at it warily, reading an expression on a face Peter can’t see. The blue-tinged glow from the long-distance video function illuminates her chin. “Yondu…”

Beep. Discontinued connection.

Peter breathes a sigh of relief. Then rapidly revokes it, when he falls victim to Gamora’s patented glare-of-doom, which is fierce enough even to encourage hyper-intelligent rodents to clean up after themselves. “Woah, woah! WhaddidIdo –“

“You idiot!”

Whenever Peter smells jasmine he flashes back to days spent chasing mom around the garden and raspberries being blown on belly-buttons. If that scent is tinged with the sweetness of death, he thinks of hospitals and crying relatives and mom holding out her hand. Yet Gamora’s fiery green face is somehow more evocative than the most reminiscent olfactory odours. Peter is smacked by the vivid recollection of his grandma pulling him around the house by the ear when he misbehaved.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Wait… uh, what am I apologizing for?”

Given that they’re cocooned amid throbbing plastic pipes, if Gamora tries to punch him she’ll risk yanking a vital power relay out at the socket. Gamora, despite being smart enough to recognise this, looks tempted regardless.

“Do you know how hard it is to get him to contact you first?” she hisses, squirming through the snake-like knot of tubes so she can properly loom. “Wrangling that man’s pride is harder than… than… removing sticks from people’s butts!”

Peter appreciates her attempt to use a mutually comprehensible metaphor. Despite his assurances to the contrary, Gamora’s never been fully convinced that inserting sticks into bodily orifices _isn’t_ a common Terran form of punishment. But her posturing raises another question.

“Why do you care?”

‘Flabbergasted’ as a word has never seemed applicable to the favoured daughter of Thanos. This is probably as close as Gamora will ever come to it. She stares at Peter as if he’s accused her of stomping on Groot. “Because I care for you two idiots. Obviously.”

That doesn’t bring Peter any closer to an epiphany. Honestly, right now he’s hoping this is all one colossal cosmic joke at his expense. It’d be preferable to the alternative: that this is one hundred percent, bona fide _real._

Only one way to find out. Ask directly.

Peter wriggles in his tubular nest until he can pinch the bridge of his nose, pre-emptively staving off the headache. “Is he your… y’know, your… partner?”

Gamora snorts. “He’s more than that.”

“ _More_ than that?” Has Yondu drugged her? Peter’s learnt not to put anything past him, but even so, he thought the man had _some_ standards. Any respect for the Ravager admiral that might have been lurking in the boondocks of Peter’s brain abruptly withers.

But Gamora’s nodding, glowing with elation. “Yes! He’s my friend.”

Ah. This must be a translator issue. Peter’s encountered them before. Wincing all the while, as if he can’t quite fathom the words being shaped by his own lips, he strives to correct her. “Your _boyfriend_.”

“He is male, by my understanding, yes.”

But how did she _reach_ that understanding? Peter shudders. “Your uh, friend-with-benefits then.”

Gamora’s expression shutters a little. A good sign. Or so Peter thinks until she opens her mouth: “I imagine there are many perks to being allied with a Ravager captain. But I do not believe friendship can be bought – only earned. And despite our… turbulent beginning, Yondu has earned mine.”

She’s not just in it for the money, or the excitement, or the grungy glamour of Ravager-life. Peter should’ve known. She gets enough of the latter two running with the Guardians, and Yondu wouldn’t let anyone piggyback cash from his safe, not even if they were celebrating their Platinum Wedding Anniversary. Really, there’s only one thing left to ascertain. Peter’s throat closes as if he’s subconsciously desperate to swallow the words, afraid of the answer they might reap.

“Do you love him?”

Gamora raises her head without pause, hair shimmering about her face in a purpled corona. “Yes,” she says simply. And Peter’s world falls apart. “I love all my friends. With all my heart. I would die for any one of them.”

Peter’s world is hastily reconstructed.

“You… what?”

Gamora frowns. “Does ‘friend’ have a subversive meaning I am unaware of on Terra?”

“No! No, but… Friend? You’re _friends_ with Yondu? Just friends?”

“That is,” says Gamora, with admirable patience, “what I’ve been telling you for the past five minutes.”

Peter’s aneurysm devolves into a stroke: he feels his body sag like a deflating hot air balloon. “Oh thank god,” he whispers. Then reasserts his scowl. “Wait. You can’t be _friends_ with Yondu.”

Gamora steeples her eyebrows. “Why not?”

“Because… because…” Why is language suddenly beyond him? Peter _knows_ what he means to say; the concept floats at the forefront of his mind, a vast amorphous amoeba that’s absorbing all other higher brain functions. But making the transition from psychological through-physiological-and-physical is proving nigh impossible. “Because that’s _wrong!_ ”

“Wrong.”

“I mean, you barely know him!”

“I’ve been talking to him every other night for a year. I may be inexperienced with the concept, but I’m fairly convinced that this is ample time for me to form a friendship –“

“Yeah, with some nice Xandarian chick! I dunno – maybe Dey’s wife? She’s about your age. Likes tight-fitting clothes, has long hair… You probably have similar interests.” Gamora’s flat stare tells him she doubts it. Peter waves her reservations away. “Okay, _anyone_. Just not Yondu. He’s a jackass.”

Gamora continues to watch him, the black holes of her pupils windows to infinity. “I think,” she says eventually, just as Peter’s about to force himself to speak to break the silence, “it runs in the family.”

Before Peter can sputter that he and Yondu aren’t blood-related and genetics don’t work like that where he comes from, Gamora flips her hair – the dismissive gesture crimped by the confines of the space – and crawls for the exit hatch. “I will discuss this matter further when you aren’t behaving like a child,” she says primly. Peter flounders after her, desperate for closure.

“Wait! Wait! One last question – have you slept with him?”

Gamora freezes.

“We haven’t had more than three minutes together outside of a holonet discussion,” she says, enunciating each word with care as if she’s forcing herself to control her temper. “Such… actions… are not conceivable in such a short period of time.” Although her face is hidden, the tension turning her shoulders into two sharp-spiked peaks is an obvious enough cue that Peter doesn’t crack a joke about three minutes being plenty long enough, what with Yondu’s age making for diminished lasting-prowess. He clears his throat instead.

“Would you sleep with him though? I mean, if you had the opportunity.”

Perhaps, in hindsight, he pushed a little far.

“Do not,” says Gamora, breathing hardly elevated despite the fact she’s just hauled a man twice her weight out a hatch and across a corridor to pin to the opposite wall, “ever insinuate such things about me and my friend again.”

Peter’s cheeks purple rapidly. He scrabbles at the forearm crushing his windpipe until Gamora lets him slurp a breath. “Is that a no then?” he asks.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a red-hot poker rootling about in his eye socket. Peter groans as Gamora huffily applies another stinging daub of antiseptic to his shiner.

“You deserve this,” she says. “Don’t you dare complain.” Which is all kinds of unfair, seeing as he was just looking out for her. But saying so will only get him punched again. As Peter’s finally seen the wisdom in keeping his mouth shut – not that he can open it without stretching the puffy, blood-boated bruise that fills the space between cheekbone and eyebrow like a the hind end of an aubergine – Gamora takes it upon herself to fill the silence. “Quill, I should not have to say this, but who I do or do not sleep with is none of your business. Do we have an accord?”

Peter can acquiesce that much. He nods. Under any other circumstance, he’d be horrified at himself for prying so far into Gamora’s personal life, but… well, this is personal for him too. Everything is, where Yondu’s concerned.

“Although,” Gamora continues, shifting to perch one perfectly toned thigh on the bed she’s lugged Peter into, so she can dress his wound and check for concussion (despite his assurances that he doesn’t break _that_ easily). “As it’s causing you distress, I’ll make an exception. Just this once. I’m not sleeping with Yondu, and nor do I ever plan to. He is. My. Friend. And I was going to have you two talk so he could ask you to go with him on a double-job, just the two of you, like you used to. Because I think there’s serious baggage here, and you both need to talk it out – or punch it out – if our teams ever wish to move on. But, as you’ve decided to be an a-hole…” Peter winces, but doesn’t deny it. “I think I’ll go in your stead.”

She stands in a ripple of slim green muscle and mauve hair. The bottle of stinging salve is deposited on the pillow by Peter’s head; Gamora ensures the stopper is corked properly before flouncing for the exit, as if whatever is sealed within is precious. Peter stares at her receding form through the vial’s crystalline prism. It splits the light into a perfectly formed rainbow, and bends Gamora’s figure into a distorted parody one might expect from a funhouse mirror. Its presence reminds Peter that even when Gamora is angry with him, she still cares far, far more than he deserves.

Peter can’t watch her walk away. “Where’d you learn to make this?” he calls, nudging the vial with his nose. “I’ve never seen an ointment like it.”

Gamora pauses under the doorway’s low arch. There’s a bushel of twigs stuck in the grilling above, from where an adult-sized Groot had banged his head. Peter can’t bring himself to clean it – and Gamora, for all her griping about the general grottiness of the _Milano_ , has never forced the issue.

“Nebula,” she says, not turning to face him. Peter thinks that’s all he’s getting: he settles on the hard stuffing of the pallet in expectation that she’ll continue her passage into the hall, up to the cockpit, as far away from him as she can get. But Gamora lingers. Her silhouette is statuesque, a solid pillar softened only by the hair that smooths her sharp edges into something softer and more delicate than any other Titan-forged killing machine. Her next words bubble forth like magma up a volcanic shaft; Gamora doesn’t _speak_ them so much as her mouth is forced apart by their pressure. “A recipe discovered by her people, lost when Thanos butchered them. Nebula taught it to me when we were close. Over the years, she used it less and less. Once I asked why, and she replied that it was pointless to bother with superstitious hoodoo when Thanos can simply rebuild her after every injury. The next time I mentioned it, she had no idea what I spoke of. I… I suspect she’s deleted it from her memory banks entirely.”

Peter leans forwards on the bed. “But you never did.”

“No. And I never will.” Gamora’s fists clench. Knot tight. Slowly release. “It’s okay to hold onto feelings in the hope that they will one day be returned, just as it is okay to banish those feelings and move on with your life. But Peter, if the person you’ve lost ever tries to find you again, it’s okay to forgive.”

The vial is cold as an icicle; he doesn’t dare squeeze too hard in case it melts and drips away. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out Gamora’s comparing her strained sibling-situation to Peter and Yondu. And while Peter appreciates where she’s coming from, he’s not quite ready to welcome his ex-captain back with open arms. “But it’s also okay not to,” he says. “It’s okay to cut them out of your life if they hurt you – right?”

Gamora doesn’t step forwards or backwards, as if afraid to exit the doorframe’s liminal space and be forced to commit to a direction. “If that’s your decision.” She swallows, shoulders slumping. “I shall inform Yondu immediately. I’ll tell him we can no longer talk.”

It’s the first time Peter’s seen her dejected. He decides he doesn’t like it. Although this is the outcome he’d been gunning for, now it’s arrived it does so with a solid punch to the gut. Gamora’s a great friend. It takes true, earnest love to give up someone you care about for the sake of someone else. But Peter can’t ask that of her – just as he’d never demand she give up on Nebula. Groaning, he falls flat on the pillow once more, bruised eye smarting. The vial’s protected in his cupped hands, which handle it as carefully as if it were a baby bird.

“As if that jackass would respect that. He’d probably fly here in person and demand you two go trinket-shopping together, or something.”

Gamora doesn’t roll her eyes like she usually does – although she’s staring at Peter with such intensity that he wishes she would, just for a reprieve. One half of his vision’s eclipsed by bruising; the other’s gone watery with the need to blink. “If I told him it was what you needed – not just wanted, _needed_? He would never attempt to contact either of us again.” A beat. “Also, I would not take him shopping. It would be like babysitting a kleptomaniac toddler.” While Yondu can play the suave businessman in client meetings, he – like Rocket – has never quite gotten the hang of the concept that wanting something more than its owner doesn’t entitle you to claim it. Peter grins at the memory of watching Yondu beat a gang of Hordesmen into the dirt, just so he could steal a cute figurine one of them had acquired from a dingy Knowhere market-stall. Then disguises it with a cough.

“Let’s not go that far. Keep chatting to him, if it makes you happy – don’t stop on my account. But as for me and him… Tell him I want a bit more time.” He takes a breath. “I left for a reason, y’know. And while the other Ravagers were worse, he still played a damn big part in it.”

Gamora’s gaze skids to one side. “I know,” she says. Her voice isn’t laced with sympathy – good, Peter neither wants it nor needs it. But there’s empathy there; the empathy of a fellow runaway who’s never going back but still misses home. “Peter?”

“Yeah?”

Gamora fiddles with her commlink to give herself somewhere else to look. “Put the rest of the medicine on your eye after ten minutes has passed. The bruising and pain will vanish within half an hour. If that’s too slow for you, I can fetch some of the nanite repair-ointment we have in storage. It works much faster, but…” _But this is made with more love._ She doesn’t need to verbalize it.

Peter pushes the bottle into his jacket pocket, then tucks his hands behind his head so his fingers tangle in his thatch of springy ginger hair. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he says. “I’m happy to wait.” He shoots her a saucy wink – sabotaged by the fact he only has one functioning pair of eyelids. Gamora recognises the motion for what it is though, and treats him to an eye-roll so dynamic she almost loses her pupils in the back of her head. She smiles as she does it though. And oh, she’s so beautiful – looking at her is like looking at a sun: almost painful in its intensity. But Peter relishes the burn. He’ll give Yondu a big sloppy kiss next time he sees him, if it means Gamora keeps smiling like that. “Go run this job with your idiot friend. Tell him… Tell him not to give up. Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Gamora ceases her dithering, stepping beyond the doorframe with a fond glance over her shoulder. She walks with the certainty of one who knows they’ll be coming back. “Not to give up. I think I can manage that.”

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt: "Gimme something where Yondu and Gamora bond weirdly over Peter being irritating. Gamora occasionally calls Yondu in frustration after Peter's done something particularly reckless, and Yondu laughs and kinda-consoles her with stories of other dumb shit from when Peter was a Ravager. And sends her his embarrassing baby-pics, of course.
> 
> Doesn't have to have any shipping, but I am a sucker for Kraglin/Yondu and Gamora/Peter! Your choice though. I just want Gamora and Yondu to oddly hit it off, and everyone else be very confused when they find out. Gamora and Yondu, of course, don't consider their friendship strange at all."
> 
> Sorry I didn't put in any Kragdu! I'll write something for them again soon.


End file.
